“Poor Mrs. D, always she bake when she is upset,” he said in a whisper.

I’d shown Jacob’s room to Agent Parker and had just started going over potential media strategies when Detective Schultz called me over to the study’s window. Outside the Dakota’s main entrance, a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows had its blue police light flashing on its dashboard.

I immediately called down to the ESU guys doing surveillance on the street.

“What the hell is going on down there?” I said. “Kill those lights. Who is that jackass? This is supposed to be an undercover operation.”

“Someone from the mayor’s office,” an ESU sergeant stationed in the lobby said. “She’s on her way up.”

A minute later, a sharp-featured fifty-something woman with a salon-perfected blond bob came through the apartment’s front door.

“April! I came straight here when I heard the news,” she said.

Mrs. Dunning seemed taken aback as she was engulfed in the tall woman’s viselike embrace. So did Mr. Dunning when he was given the same treatment.

“Christ, this is all we need,” I mumbled.

It was the first deputy mayor, Georgina Hottinger. Before being promoted to the mayor’s second in line, she’d been in charge of the New York Improvement Fund, which roped wealthy individuals into paying for city events. Which would have been useful had this been a charity function instead of a kidnapping investigation.

“Who’s in charge here?” she commanded as she burst into the study. I guess she was through with the air- and ass-kissing.

“I am. Mike Bennett. Major Case Squad,” I said.

“Every development in this case is to be sent immediately to my office. And I mean every one. The Dunnings will be shown every imaginable courtesy in their time of need, first and foremost being their privacy.”

Staring into her ice-pick blue eyes, I suddenly remembered the nickname the City Hall press corps had given Hottinger. Still resembling the ballerina in the San Francisco ballet that she’d once been, the take-no-prisoners politico was called the “Barbed-Wire Swan.”